Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

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Jonuary, 1946 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 47 held or were niggardly in assigning such traits to all others. Only in connection with membership in the armed forces did the short stories published in the war year of 1943 accord something like the population parity to the non-Anglo-Saxons. Short story writers did at least include a few Jews, immigrants and non-Anglo-Saxons in their military and naval personnel. Rank, incidentally, was important in these stories. Of 58 speaking characters in uniform, 76 percent were pictured as officers, only 24 percent as enlisted men. The research data also reveal that 42 percent of the fictional Anglo-Saxon housewives had maids and other servants, whereas only 13 percent of the fictional non-Anglo-Saxon housewives had servants. Over and over again the superiorinferior connotations repeated themselves in stereotyped dialogue and description. The attitude of both authors and editors was shown by the repeated assignment of “heart” (or sympathetic) motivations to Anglo-Saxons. They were conspicuously concerned with romantic love, marriage, affection, emotional security, adventure for its own sake, patriotism, idealism, and justice. In contrast “head” motivations were made largely typical of minority characters. They showed interest mostly in money, self-advancement, power, and dominance. The evidence is clear. American short story writers have made “nice people” synonymous with Anglo-Saxons. Such characters were written as intelligent, industrious, esthetic, democratic, athletic, practical, frank, lovable. Granting that popular fiction seeks a generally amiable overtone, it was nevertheless invidiously true that the nonAnglo-Saxons were usually pictured as the “villains,” domineering, immoral, selfish, unintelligent, cowardly, lazy, sly, cruel, stubborn, non-esthetic, weak. The Stage Under modern conditions the legitimate stage appears to be by far the most liberal of all media of entertainment in avoidance of racial stereotypes on the one hand and pioneering toward new and more generous concepts on the other. Oddly enough, however, some obnoxious and persistent racial stereotypes have been popularized in the theater — notably the “Uncle Tom” type of Negro, the quarrelsome Jewish business man, and the “stage Irishman.” Men to the Sea, while not a commercial success on Broadway, was interesting because four women shared an apartment while their husbands were at sea and one of the women was a Negro. Her presence and color were taken for granted. Motion Pictures The history of films dealing with Negroes has been streaked with the record of race protests. Negro educators like Dr. L. W. Reddick say that the film industry from its first big picture in 1915 down to very recent times has consistently disparaged Negroes. As they see the matter, Dixie-born D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation was nothing less than a disaster since it used the screens of the country to spread a purely Southern estimate of the Negro. The more recent Hollywood product Gone with the Wind is also regretted because of its glorification of slave-owners and the whole stereotype of the attractive Southern aristocrat. An analysis of 100 motion pictures involving either “Negro themes or Negro characters of more than passing significance” produced this score : Stereotyped and disparaging 75 Neutral or unobjectionable 13 Favorable 12 The findings of the Bureau of Applied Social Research indicated that Hollywood has recently become aware of the stereotype and of the social impact of gags, lines, situations, and inferences which heretofore were judged only by the criterion of amusement. Of late the film studios have occasionally done better. In the Bette Davis film hi This Our Life, the Negro boy was exceptionally well written and sensitively portrayed. A Negro boy was included in a choir of Catholics in Going My Way. But against these and the two favorable documentaries, Americavs All and The Negro Soldier, were the caricatures in Lifeboat, The Life of Mark Twain and Cabin In the Sky. Comic Cartoon Books Unlike the daily newspaper cartoon strips, the “comic” books tend to be melodramatic and serious, rather than humorous. Millions of readers, not all juvenile, are devoted to them. They are a relatively new medium of great influence. Before the war, the comic books had drawn some critical fire by the use of racial stereotypes. They apparently took these comments to heart. By 1944 there were few traces among them of the stock characters noted in examples published in 1937. One favorite villain in the pre-war era was “The Chink.” He was a stereotyped Chinese devoted to refined tortures. Other now-forgotten cartoon stereotypes of 1937 included a cowardly Italian named